to not understand why you can't buy a 5 seater car that seats 5 people?

[haveuheard]

We have been trying and failing to buy a bigger car for about 6 months.

We want a car that will seat 5 people, with the possibility of having three car seats. Not massive seats, just HBBs. Nothing fits. Yes we could buy a minibus or a 7 seater and shove one of the kids in the boot inches from the back window but I don't want to, or we could spend more than a lot of people have for a house deposit but that seems stupid for a family car.

Why doesn't anyone make a sensible family car??

I have Fiat 500L pop star. It fits 3 across the back plus the spare 2 in the boot and the boot is huge without them. It looks quite funky, especially if you go for a colour combo.

We need this and picking up our VW Touran at the weekend.... has taken a while to find a decent 2nd hand one tho!

Hi, we have a Citroen Picasso grande. It’s lasted for ages (probs going to jinx it now.) we have had three car seats in the back for years. The slimmer type, you can’t get three of the really wide variety, so we cobbled one wide and two slimmer car seats in once the youngest was out of the baby car seat. The boot has two pop up passenger seats also which come in handy.

£14k S-max should be around 2013/2014. Is that still too old?
We paid £10.5k last year for a 2011 top spec model.

The s max and touran are similar sizes.
We've had Touran, Galaxy and S-Max all fit 3 car seats across the back (twins in baby seats, and elder child in HBB)
Best is Galaxy because as PPs said as they get older they don't necessarily need less room!

We had a Ford Mondeo when we had to fit 3 dc in car seats in the back. One was a rear facing baby seat though so that might have been a bit smaller than a high back booster.

Fiat multipla has 3 in back and 3 in front. Full size seats

I’ve got a 2006 S-max, it has 65,000 miles ish on the clock. If I was looking to buy second hand I’d probably discount it because of it’s age, but it is an absolute work horse. It definitely gets three car seats in the back, and it has loads of boot space for buggy etc.

I’d look at the mileage of a car over the age.

We recently bought a 2 year old C4 grand picasso for 15k. For your budget we could easily have got one a year or two older. It's a 7 seater, we have 2 DC and a 3rd on the way but thought the option of the extra 2 seats would be very useful for giving friends lifts etc.

Everyone raves about the Smax but we tried both and much preferred the Citroen.

Plenty of choices then - but the OP's ACTUAL requirement is a 10cm wider Vauxhall Meriva. YABU OP - as amply demonstrated it actually is really easy to buy a 5 seater car that seats 5 - but your requirements are incredibly narrow and were drip-fed.

What model of the berlingo have you looked out? We have had a few multispace ones. The latest one is a XL version as has 3 normal sized seats in the back and the isofix seat we have seems to fit nicely in 1 space (so doesn’t overlap onto the middle seat) so I would be surprised if you couldn’t get 3 seats in the back. The other versions we had were not XL and definitely wouldn’t have fitted 3 seats in (which is why we went to XL)

I bought a Citroen xsara picasso for this exact reason. Even so when we changed car seats as the kids grew one of the seats we tried was too wide to fit in. So we bought a different version of the same seat.

Kia Carens is a 7 seater but has 3 proper seats in the back which you can fit 3 car seats in.

How big are the people your trying to fit in? Most five seaters fit five people, unless you’re trying to fit in five Arnold Schwarzenegger’s!
We have a Honda Civic and a mini, the Honda seems big.

Volvo XC90

Legally if you can't fit three car seats across the back you can put the oldest child in the middle without a car seat. Obviously it would be better if they were on one, though. Bubble Bum is meant to be quite good for this. Also there are some slimmer high backed boosters, Britax Adventure is a slim one which is inexpensive. It's meant to be easier to fit three across if you can tesselate rear and forward facing, if you'd be willing to entertain the idea of one or two children in a rear facing seat. You can get seats which go up to 25kg rear facing, which is about 6-7 years.

When they say you can't put a child seat in the middle back seat or front seat, it can sometimes mean that it's simply not been tested, not that it's actually unsafe. If the car seat fits well then there's no problem with it. Or sometimes you're looking at isofix fittings, but it can oftem be easier to get 3 across when seatbelt fitted rather than isofix fitted as you have a bit more movement possibility then whereas isofix is rigid. There's also a gadget you can get which will move the isofix slightly further across, which is apparently safe. I will look it up if you want.

I'd start by looking at which seats you have now and how they best fit together, if you need to get a third seat decide which weight class you're looking at, and then look at car/seat combos. If you decide to purchase a third seat it's not necessarily about width, it's about how the bases of the seats puzzle together.

If the children you're carrying are above 4 years in age you could join the Facebook group Car Seat Advice UK as they have plenty of posts about 3 across and you could ask for new suggestions as well. If any child is under 4 though be prepared they will insist they should still be rear facing.

@confusednorthner
We have a Honda FRV. Yes it is a 6 seater - 3 front and 3 back. We bought it new in 2005 and I'm hanging on to it for as long as possible. Great car!!!!

We have a Volvo XC60. I can get all three of mine in the back seats. Have had stage 0 with isofix, stage 1 and hbb. And now 2 stage 1 seats and a hbb.

We had this problem 13 years ago when I was pregnant with ds3 and ended up going for the 6 seater Fiat Multipla. Since then we've had ds4 so it didn't need replaced when he was born.

We currently have a Ford Galaxy, which wasn't an option years ago as the back seats were a 60/40 split and the seats in the boot were tiny and had no legroom. The seats are now three individuals and the boot seats are suitable for 6ft tall 18 and 16 year olds, but the boot isn't massive.

Also, they are much more economical than they used to be so if you wanted you could use it as a five seater with the boot seats folded down all the time so you have a massive boot.

We have a multimac at the mo for our 3 kids (7, 5 and 3yo). We need to change cars soon and I’m leaning towards a 7-seater as it would be really useful for carrying friends and family. However, the multimac can’t really be lifted in and out so anyone wanting to use the back seats in a 7-seater would need to climb in through the boot. Therefore we’re thinking about switching to 3 separate car seats, but in so many cars the middle seat is tiny - they’re laid out so you have 2 big seats and a space between them, rather than 3 normal size seats. At a bit of a loss right now.

Should possibly add, if you have 3 high back boosters side by side, which HBBs are you using?

Apparently Joie Trillo, Maxi Cosi Rodi and Britax Adventure are the three slimmest HBBs.

www.madeformums.com/reviews/best-car-seats-that-fit-3-in-the-back-of-most-cars/

www.madeformums.com/reviews/cars-with-3-isofix-points-in-the-back-seat/

Also BubbleBum might be an option for occasional use in the middle seat. (Forgot to add that before). That is more than 10cm slimmer than most booster seats - so might get you the "extra" 10cm you need.

I had an 04 Ford Galaxy and we had 3 carseats. Plus the option of 2 extra passengers. But with the back 2 seats removed the boot was HUGE!

How many kids do you have? You say you've had merivas previously, I have a meriva and 3 kids. It has involved a bit of work finding a booster to fit but we got there.

It is so much easier when they grow though, I've only got one in a car seat now it's great!

Dps mondeo fits dds isofix and 2 HBB.
I have a zafira that does the same. We rarely use the boot seats they're folded down for pram space.